/lit/ - Literature

egan wrote a story, 'singleton' about that, imo it's rather weak, also mentioned it in 'schild's ladder', possibly other books too

>Being a singleton meant accepting that every decision had its cost, but once you understood that this state of affairs was a hard-won prize, not a plight to rail against, it gave some dignity to all but the most foolish choices.
......
>Cass dated the advent of civilization to the invention of the quantum singleton processor. The Qusp. She accepted the fact that she couldn’t entirely avoid splitting into multiple versions; interacting with any ordinary object around her gave rise to an entangled system—Cass plus cloud, Cass plus flower—and she could never hope to prevent the parts that lay outside her from entering superpositions of different classical outcomes, generating versions of her who witnessed different external events.
>Unlike her hapless ancestors, though, she did not contribute to the process herself. While the Qusp inside her skull performed its computations, it was isolated from the wider world—a condition lasting just microseconds at a time, but rigidly enforced for the duration—only breaking quarantine when its state vector described one outcome, with certainty. With each operating cycle, the Qusp rotated a vector describing a single alternative into another with the same property, and though the path between the two necessarily included superpositions of many alternatives, only the final, definite state determined her actions.

at least if i understand these rambling properly

anyway they all acted like ordinary persons but were more snobbish about muh free will

>“I’m the quintessential singleton,” Cass replied. “I weigh up all my choices very carefully.”

>>5623372
Never heard about it, and I fucking love Egan. Thank you.

One of the perennial problems of agency is that it essentially can't be non-paradoxically described. I mean, let alone in a deterministic or mechanistic universe.

Daniel Dennett is actually pretty good for this because he has a very plain & clear prose style and obviously doesn't talk to general readership in his poppy books like they've read every single ounce of scholarly literature on the topic. He does things like try to describe agency in non-paradoxical ways, often looking at recent attempts by Nozick (or whoever happens to have annoyed him lately since he's a bit of a cunt).

But yeah it's basically the oldest fucking problem ever. What does it even mean to be an 'agent', a generator of actions? We can't even describe or intuit consistent models of causality, or define discrete causes and effects, let alone talk about random bubbles of 'causal originality' or 'uncaused causes' or however the fuck you want to define an agent. At best you can introduce quantum indeterminacy or some similar idea of shit randomly making things behave non-mechanistically (Nozick tries this and Dennett responds), but that's stupid for a whole shitload of reasons, and doesn't even really constitute agency, mostly because an agent seems to presuppose being in and part of the world while also unbound by its necessity, and the most you can do with QI is posit that something external jammed its time-space dick through the fabric of our closed system universe. Big fucking whoop.

Tbh though Dennett's answers and suggestions, like a definition of human agency as rational deliberation and meta-recursiveness and all that, without actually being non-deterministic, are not exactly fucking inspiring.

>>5623351
>If our reality is ruled by laws of determinism
What are "laws of determinism"? You mean deterministic laws? What are those laws? Can you give an example?

> how would you describe a creature that possess free will
Can you tell us what you mean by free will? Something not bound by deterministic laws?

>>5623426
I'm thinking about something not bounded by cause-effect chain.

>>5623372
why haven't you killed yourself yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(metaphysics)#Robert_Nozick

>>5623460
I don't think you understand that our entire concept of anything existing is completely dependent on cause-effect train.

If something exists for any period of time, it is subject to cause and effect. Anythings existence at any given instant is a direct effect of its existence the instant before, and so on.

Asking that question is like asking what it would be like for something to exist with no connection to the physical world whatsoever.

All our behaviour, even if deterministically caused, is the result of our mental cognition moving in the most optimal direction possible for it to do so given its current environmental inputs, historical conditioning, and capacity for processing abstractum. In an indeterministic world, our brains would still move in the exact same manner -- or, if not, we should hope they would and direct them do so, for the optimal mode of cognition is subjectively governed by ourselves thus always absolutely in our best interests. In other words, within a deterministic world, our brain is already doing the best it can, and in an indeterministic world, could only possibly do an equal or lesser job, thus its fair to say that even in a deterministic world we have free will because we always do that which we most want to do. If you stipulate free will as necessitating anything other than doing what we most want to do, you're irreparablyirrational and not worth conversing with any further.

>>5623351
>If our reality is ruled by laws of determinism, how would you describe a creature that possess free will?
A "godlike" being. That is, a first creator who does not abide by our laws of physics. Omniscient and omnipotent, above space, time and our universe.

All other agents are irrevocably bound to be slaves to their primitive instincts.

"You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will". This applies to all organic life.

>>5623472
>Nozick
>the man who supports "anarcho-capitalism"
>seemingly too retarded to understand that capitalism and anarchism do not fit
A hack.

>>5623372

That appears to describe only indeterminacy, not free will.

>>5623740
>anarcho-capitalism

"muh free-market utopia"

>>5623825
>/r/communism
>/r/Marx

>>5623827
>/r/FalseChoices

>>5623833
>>/r/FalseChoices
That's not a real board. Try:
/r/leftist
/r/leftcommunism

that's what reddit's all about.

>>5623851
>That's not a real board.

I wouldn't know, but I'll bow to your expertise.

>dfw all sex is rape because no free will thus no consent

at last i truly see

>>5623351

cute girl in a Panzer Totenkopf cap.

>>5623946

>nothing is rape because rape requires intention which requires free will

>>5623969
STOP OPPRESSING ME

>>5623351
GET OUTTA HERE KARL POPPER

>>5623811
what's the difference there?

>>5623969
any sex by a hypothetic person who managed to achieve the free will with ordinary humans is rape

>>5623969
>nothing is rape
I love this site so fucking much.

>>5623983

As I see it (and maybe I'm wrong) what Cass has in her head is some kind of quantum randomiser, right? Something which produces an output determining her decisions which is not, in its specifics, influenced by anything external to it.

But to be 'random' is not to be 'freely willed'. The device's output itself, for example, is random, but it's an inanimate object and therefore could never have 'free will'. So clearly, indeterminacy is necessary but not sufficient.

>>5624001
i'm not sure, but it seems egan is mostly fascinated with multiple universes interpretation of quantum mechanics and that processor mostly intended to stop the split of the universe with every decision... (dunno what for) but since it was isolated during the decision it gives the free will as a bonus

anyway it's not a randomizer, it's basically her brain, she thinks with it

>>5624046
>it's not a randomizer, it's basically her brain, she thinks with it

>While the Qusp inside her skull performed its computations, it was isolated from the wider world—a condition lasting just microseconds at a time, but rigidly enforced for the duration—only breaking quarantine when its state vector described one outcome, with certainty

That's a randomiser - or an indeterminiser, if you like.

>>5623351
It wouldn't. Act comes from necessity and necessity is number 1 condition for free will not to exist. A creature with free will must thus have no necessities, and will not act because it has nothing to satisfy and acting sucks.

>If our reality is ruled by laws of determinism, how would you describe a creature that possess free will? How would it act?
God.

>>5624065
she didn't have a flesh brain and her decisions weren't random

just because qusp was isolated during computations doesn't mean it couldn't process the data from the real world

>>5624081
>just because qusp was isolated during computations doesn't mean it couldn't process the data from the real world

Then I have to say I don't see what separates Cass from anyone else.

Are you sure the story is actually relevant to the OP? It's beginning to seem like it might not be.

A creature with free will would act rational

>>5624070
Is it even possible to act without necessity?

>>5624091

>Then I have to say I don't see what separates Cass from anyone else.

the whole conception of determinism says that even the very mechanics of our thought process is determined by the university, it's not true for people like cass

>Are you sure the story is actually relevant to the OP?

that's actually two stories, the quotes were from schild's ladder where it's a detail of the entourage, but the conception is the same as in 'singleton'

there is determinism and determinism, people with qusp had their personal thought process not determined by the state of universe even though it was determined by the situation and their personality. how would you imagine it otherwise, some random idiots not caring of the external world?

it's put more clear in the story

>The truth was, reality as a whole was deterministic, whether you had a Qusp for a brain or not; the quantum state of the multiverse at any moment determined the entire future. Personal experience — confined to one branch at a time — certainly appeared probabilistic, because there was no way to predict which local future you'd experience when a branch split, but the reason it was impossible to know that in advance was because the real answer was “all of them”.
>For a singleton, the only difference was that branches never split on the basis of your personal decisions. The world at large would continue to look probabilistic, but every choice you made was entirely determined by who you were and the situation you faced.

>>5623740

Nozick was a minarchist.

>>5624130
>the whole conception of determinism says that even the very mechanics of our thought process is determined by the university, it's not true for people like cass

Well *literally* the mechanics are in fact determined by the universe, insofar as those mechanics are the result of human design, which in turn etc. Right?

What you mean, I think, is that the *output* isn't determined by outside influences.

>For a singleton, the only difference was that branches never split on the basis of your personal decisions. The world at large would continue to look probabilistic, but every choice you made was entirely determined by who you were and the situation you faced.

Yeah, this really doesn't seem relevant to the issue at all, then. Fair enough.

>>5623372
fuck off.

>>5623351
such a creature cannot be demonstrated to exist in a deterministic universe

>>5624187

The last four words of that sentence are superfluous. And that goes the other way, too.

>>5624166
>Well *literally* the mechanics are in fact determined by the universe, insofar as those mechanics are the result of human design, which in turn etc. Right?

no, not at all
quantum mechanics has its own unique relationship with determinism

>Yeah, this really doesn't seem relevant to the issue at all, then. Fair enough.

how do you even imagine the free will then? do you know that the very question if we have the free will or not goes to if our thought processes are deterministic or not (it's not proven if they are but if they are merely biochemistry and electromagnetism they are deterministic so a few people believe that the true free will doesn't exist)

>>5624201
>no, not at all

I'm not going to engage further, but Yes, unequivocally Yes, Yes they are. Go back and re-read if you think otherwise.

>>5624228

i wonder if they even teach some physics in your college or wherever you learn, your conception of universe is incredibly newtonian

>>5624101
i'd go with no

>>5624591

>>5624591

post more nazi loli

>>5624613
>muh unmoved mover

My main problem with free will is determining what part of a human being has it. Your arm doesn't have free will, as it is controlled by your brain. But what parts of your mind have free will? There are clearly some parts that you don't have control over, such as emotion, hallucination, dreams, and involuntary thoughts. Where is the boundary between the part of you with free will and the part without?